In the course of the 2015 general elections, I travelled through the peril
of bad roads to Ekpoma to cast my vote in the presidential election.
Truly, I voted for Buhari. Despite the irregularities of the process, he
won though with an implicit Carter clause, which is that though there were
obvious irregularities, they were not enough to warrant an annulment. Many
of us who were impatient with President Jonathan and the contradictions of
his administration felt change was indeed required. One singular reason
that made me vote for Buhari was the thinking that he would be
anti-imperialist and exercise national autonomy in key policies.
Today, it has turned out that that I made a mistake. I apologise. The very
reason for voting for him was the first casualty. For him to be president
he had to be sold to the Americans who bought his candidacy and who
subsequently asked him to open the economy for foreign investment, a
euphemism for external control. Christine Lagarde, the Empress of IMF
visited and gave the administration a cocktail of slave driving tools to
further impoverish Nigerians struggling to eke out a bare living. Her
recipes were subsidy removal, flexible currency, increased value added tax
and stamp duty among others.
Truly, the state of the nation pre-2015 was saddening and Nigerians truly
deserved a lease from the overwhelming national problems. Jonathan
Administration inherited a paralysed state structure even though he was
the vice president to President Yar’adua. The business of state took the
backstage as a result of the illness of the president and its
politicization. Jonathan did not understand the historical forces that
shaped events in the country. He felt obligated to the cabal of retired
military generals whom he credited with ushering in democracy. Overwhelmed
by the problem of governance, he ran his government through committees
read as being a product of cluelessness than an act of inclusivity. He was
unable to tame the oil cabal and oil subsidy became a national scandal
warranting a major inquisition by the National Assembly. Petroleum
products were short in supply and its prices were jerked up from N65 to
N141 thereby deepening the misery of the people, notwithstanding the
subsequent reversals. Boko Haram intensified their activities and much of
the north-east was under sect’s occupation. While his government was
engaged with the insurgents and with mercenaries to boot, the war itself
spawned an armament profiteers who reportedly bought second rate weapons
for the soldiers in ways that the war became an Automated Teller Machine
(ATM). Money ostensibly meant for purchase of arms was seized in far away
South Africa. The president was seen by the impatient public as slow and
weak. He did not help matters when he said he was not a general thereby
eliciting the question of who he was— a Goliath or David? Nonetheless,
his administration rebased the national economy upping the country to the
status of the biggest economy in the continent. Although, he privatised
the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, he did not resolve the electricity
problem and the country remained world importer of power generating set.
Corruption was widespread with varied free riders dotting his
administration. His government embarked on various infrastructure
rehabilitation projects including airports and railway. To his credit, he
fulfilled aspect of the electoral reform and brought credibility to the
electoral umpire. He secured the lid on the Niger–Delta militants and
ensured steady export of crude. He, however, squandered a historical
opportunity of restructuring the country after organizing a National
Conference in 2014 by neglecting to action aspects of the report to
unbundle the over-centralised state. He did the unimaginable in a
continent in which incumbents do not organise elections to lose (apologies
to Pascal Lissouba of Congo Brazzaville). He handed over power to a
successor and accepting the results of the presidential election before
the final tally.
Under the watch of President Buhari, economic misfortune is continuing
under the slavish economic policies of neoliberalism—those economic
principles that privilege the market and its integral privatisation
programme through divestment of the public sector. There are no economic
laws that say that the private sector is superior to public sector. This
is not borne by historical records. Its current version being pursued by
the Nigerian government is Medium Term Economic Framework (MTEF). It is
being implemented outside the rule book because the minders of the
Nigerian state don’t understand it and naturally it can’t work in country
that is badly divided without a common national creed. It is least
surprising that the policies therefrom are hardly being contested despite
their deleterious effect on the national wellbeing. Indeed, they have
become normalised. Besides, economic mismanagement has led to a rapidly
increasing debt burden. The country is already thrown back to pre-2006 era
of debt overhang with external debt hovering around $22 billion. As though
nothing is amiss, the state actors are still comforting themselves with an
elusive debt-to GDP ratio of 21 percent and a credit threshold of about 51
percent. They forgot that the country does not have a patriotic and
discipline elite that can utilise credit facilities for the purpose they
are meant for. The naira, its currency, weighted against that of many
developing countries is worthless.
Add up. The consequence of a disarticulated economy is the acceleration of
social vices, namely, kidnapping, ritually killings, 419, armed robbery,
killings by security forces, bribe–taking, misappropriation of resources,
subsidy scam, vending of fake products, prostitution and illegal migration
across the Sahara desert to Libya enroute to Europe. These combined with
structural violence such as the hike in prices of petroleum products,
multiple taxes and attacks on the rule of of law have aggravated the
misery of the Nigerian people.
Blood-letting has become the order of the day. The entire Middle-belt has
become the open killing field of land-grabbing Fulani herdsmen whose
murderous activities are countenanced by current wielders of state power.
We are all living witnesses to the spectacle of mass burial in Benue state
and plateau. Historians say it is a repetition of the massacres of the
Tivs in the riots of the early 1960s. The statistics are chilling and
simultaneously infuriating. Figures from Christian Solidarity Worldwide
(CSW) put the number of persons killed by Fulani militias in the Middle
Belt in the first quarter of 2018 at 1,061. In its survey, Amnesty
International put the number of deaths across 17 states since the
beginning of the 2018 at 1, 8143. In a summing up covering June 2015- to
date, US Council on Foreign Relations earlier put the figure of those
killed at 19, 890. About 54,595 lives were lost due to the activities
of the insurgents between 2011 and 2018. These figures don’t tell the
whole story. Add the gory tales of Fulani herdsmen activities in your
respective states; you have a sense of scale. These killings earned the
country a non-enviable third place ranking in the 2018 Global Index on
Terrorism (GIT). Any one not disgusted by the shedding of innocent blood
cross the country most probably has lost his or her humanity. These days,
the perception outside the country which is the truth is that Nigeria is a
war zone.
In about 2000, at the turn of the century, the economist of London
observed that, Nigeria was badly divided as a country. It noted further
that the football team, the only entity that momentarily unites the
people, despite the talent of individual player; do not play as a team.
If that was the perception in 2000, now the unity does not exist, as the
incumbent administration has completely eroded it mainstreaming the
domination of a tiny migrant community over the rest component parts of
the country. Happy with its temporal hegemony, it is impervious to the
logic of restructuring the country. Indeed, we are at the crossroads
reached by the makers of July 1966 counter-coup with the conclusion that
there is no basis for unity.
Under the current administration whose leadership the insurgents were
ready to choose as a mediator while he was yet to be elected into office
is unable to handle the insurgents that have now grown into a hydra-headed
monster. The daring attacks on national security formations are
debilitating. Need we search for the logic of reversal? The security
forces of the country are not cohesive as it is divided by ethnic
appointments in which of over 75 percent of leadership positions are
occupied by a single ethnic nationality in a multinational country;
deployment of men to frontline is also ethnically skewed while there is a
loud absence of a coordinating national security agency where intelligence
is sieved for the benefit of national wellbeing. This is as a result of
unbridled incompetence and hegemonic delusion. In a rather intriguing way,
the country is being encircled by insurgents. Carnage is on-going in
Zamfara; Sokoto was breached by jihadists labeled by the outgone Inspector
General of Police as Malian herdsmen. This is certainly not the country of
our dream.
The above problems require solutions. On the contrary, President Buhari
and his team have reinforced them weaving into the complex a benumbing
hopelessness. The litany is endless and saddening: 87 million living in
extreme poverty (Brookings institution, 2018) and 13.2 million out of
school, highest globally.
Clearly, the resolution of these sundry crises of the Nigerian state is
beyond the current president. Weakened by ill-health, devoid of vision and
intellectual capacity to navigate the wide field of our national problems,
he cannot provide solutions. However, the president has failed to read the
national mood and understand the lie of the state. Browbeating his party
into nominating him as the presidential candidate instead of paving way
for a brand new candidate within his party reeks of ego and spiritual
poverty. I can only wish Mr President good luck. I should note that it is
his right as a Nigerian citizen to vote and be voted for. But what the
presidential chat has revealed is that country is drifting and the extant
leadership can only endure in a banana republic which Nigeria has become.
Should he force himself on Nigerians through a corrupt use of the security
forces and manipulation of the electoral process, a reality already being
foreshadowed by signals from these vital institutions of state, it will be
unacceptable. Indeed the leadership of the country has become a major
contradiction to be resolved at least for now through the ballot.
Nigerians may be slow in acting, but they can never be taken for granted.
I refuse to be a bondsman in my fatherland. For me, my choice is clear: it
is goodbye to illusions.
Akhaine, an Associate Professor with the Lagos State University is a
Visiting member of the Guardian Editorial Board.